Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger Warning: Animal cruelty
I had to give this three stars because honestly there’s a lot of terrible people in this one which can sometimes work for you as a reader, and this time it absolutely did not. And most importantly, there’s too many twists in this one that just got kind of tossed at you that really drove me up the wall. I felt like I was reliving The Girl on the Train again. If you don’t give your readers enough context for a situation and go “twist” like you are M. Night Shyamalan then you did not write a very good book in my opinion. It didn’t help me when we get twist 1, twist 2, and twist 3 that then it left plot holes all over the place and in one place, it didn’t make sense based on what a character was thinking about at the time (I am writing vague to not spoil). We also are following two distinct timelines, the character of Amber in 1998 when she’s a pre-teen and then Amber in 2020 as a wife and mother. I will say that Dotson did a great job with the 1998 sections of the novel, but everything in the 2020 sections were not very good, because of not only the twists, but it dragged badly. I usually love haunted house mysteries, but things did not make sense at all until the twists. I just kept going, so we are just ignoring this? Why?
These Familiar Walls starts off with a murder. Actually two. Two people we don’t know are dealing with masked intruders who kill them. It then shifts over to Amber moving into her parent’s old home. We find out that the people in the beginning of the novel were her parents, and she inherited the house. She’s stressed about moving in, the neighborhood, and the fact that she and her family are dealing with COVID and being “locked down” and how they are almost broke with just her job selling insurance and her husband being a firefighter. And then things start to happen. Amber finds herself not being fully aware of her actions, her husband loses time too, and then their kids start acting strangely as well. The novel shifts between 2020 and then Amber in 1998. Amber in 1998 is living with her parents and her sister Hannah. When a new boy moves to the neighborhood, Amber thinks she may have finally found someone to be her friend. She doesn’t realize though that this boy is not someone to be friends with and this will cause a ripple that will not only affect Amber in 1998, but in 2020.
I already said above, not many people are good people in this one. And there’s not a lot of character development happening, not even with Amber in 2020. The 1998 pre-teen her was very developed, but again without spoilers, the adult version I had a lot of comments about.
The flow wasn’t great in the 2020 version and as many readers said you are going to go, well this house is obviously haunted, move out. And then it just started to read as filler after a while. How many times can you read about Amber avoiding mirrors and not wanting to see herself. Or something is whispering she does not understand.
I will say that the ending was….eh because of the twists. And again, plot holes. This is definitely one I will be happy to discuss in more detail if someone asks, but don’t want to spoiler tag my whole review.
